OT-GoT: Just finished "Storm of Swords." What should I re-read?

I know we're butting close to no more OT, but since we're not there yet... I tried posting this on some Song of Ice and Fire boards, but they are too spoiler-y and give away to much. I don't want to risk that. Since there's a ton of Game of Thrones/SongOIAF fans here, I figured why not.

This thread is about the first three books of A Song of Ice and Fire which closely resembles the first four seasons of HBO's Game of Thrones. For spoilers sake, you've been warned. Let's try to keep anything specifically from the two most recent books out of this thread. Also, let's not mention A Storm of Sword's epilogue since, well, obvs if you've read it. No need to risk a non-reader seeing it.

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OKAY! Here's my question. I just finished A Storm of Swords. Before I start a Feast for Crows, are there any chapters I should go back and re-read. I looking for stuff that may be important or provide hints to future stuff or characters that I may have missed in my first read of the first 3 books. Examples:

AGoT: Eddard XIII (47) - The first paragraph where he's dreaming is important.

AGoT: Eddard X (39) - Tower of Joy

ACoK: Dany IV (48) - Visions in the House of the Undying

ASoW: Bran II (24) - Meera Reed's story. This one I already went back and re-read. How I didn't pay much attention to it when the Reeds continuously ask Bran "Are you sure your father didn't tell you this story" is beyond me.

ASoW: Arya IV (22) - Ghost of High Heart

Stuff like that is what I'm looking for. I'm an insanely slow reader so I hope to be able to pick out some important stuff before my insane urge to continue on to the next book takes over.

Also, for fun, maybe list some of your favorite chapters in the first three books? I really, really wish I read the "Only Cat" chapter before seeing it on TV. What a fantastic way to finish that book.

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Reading all of the books and then going through again. A lot of the stuff won't make sense until you start to get a broader picture and more characters are introduced. A second read is definitely worth it for a book series as nuanced and dense as ASOIAF

Also, once you are further, check out the reddit sub (/ASOIAF). There are some amazing theories that people pull out from the text, far beyond the obvious stuff like R + L = J, etc

This definitely seems to be a series I'll read again. It's very literally taken me two years to read the first three books. Obviously there were months on end when I didn't read, but now that I've caught the TV series and everything is new, I suspect I won't be taking any breaks until I finish. I think I read the last 10 chapters of ASOS in about a 36 hour span.

The R + L = J stuff is exactly why I ask this question. These kind of things always go over my head (which means I'm always more surprised when they're revealed, which is fun I guess). Without seeing the internet chatter I would have never considered the possibility of Jon Snow not being Ned's son.

Is a given - the potential mother's lineage is the part that opens possibilities. A lot depends on what happens in the upcoming book since the last book puts some things up in the air - least spoiler-ish way I can put it.

I don't think that's a given at all. There're way too many breadcrumbs in the R+L=J direction and it only becomes more obvious on re-reads, the first time I was searching the text for the reasons behind the theory and trying to argue it and the subsequent times it more felt like I was confirming my bias, but I have a hard time seeing how the argument gets made another way.

That all being said it is patently obvious that George likes to "F' with us, so while this could have been his original plan I can see him switching it up, just because he doesn't like feeling predictable.

There' so many theories and prophecies and whatnot. If you go on reddit.com/r/asoiaf you can spend a whole day reading about all kinds of crazy fan predictions. Have you heard about the R+L=J theory? There's a whole lot of foreshadowing about that, the Tower of Joy chapter is the catalyst for this theory in AGoT. Also when Arya talks to the Ghost of High Heart in ASoS, couple of cool little foreshadowings there.

... using this wiki (http://awoiaf.westeros.org) as a reference guide as you read the next two books. It does a good job of trying to keep spoilers out by giving you descriptions of characters by book. For example, http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Samwell_Tarly .

There are also great chapter summaries, family trees, geographies, etc... There is always a risk you'll run into spoilers and if you don't have the will power to avoid clicking on book four and five content, I'd avoid it, but overall it's a great resource I used along the way and after reading the books.

I don't know that it's vital to re-read the first three before continuing with 4 & 5. I'm on my second read of AFfC after reading all 5 sequentially. The thing is, if you don't know what happens in 4 & 5, you'll miss the significance of much of the forshadowing pertaining to the more recent books. Regardless of what you decide to do, I agree that it's a lot of fun to get new meaning from seemingly trivial events on the second read.

As far as favorite chapters, I really like Catelyn VII (ACoK) and Jamie V (ASoS). Jamie's story arc is my favorite in the series, and these sections add great depth to Jamie as a character.

It will be difficult for someone to say: "Hey check out this section in Book 3 as it's important in book 5" without providing some context that will be (a) confusing because you haven't read those books yet, and (b) are potential spoilers.

I say you finish up the series and then re-read or skim to look where you might have missed some foreshadowing. Otherwise, alot of it might not make sense or you will end up doing it again later anyways since you will know more of the story.

That's a good point. Maybe I'm being too harsh on myself for missing things the first time through and I shouldn't worry about it so much and just enjoy re-discovering it when I understand the importance. For example, I just re-read the Ghost of High Heart synopsis and I'm like "woah, hey there awesome foreshadowing that I missed." I guess if I was really on the ball I could say I would have seen what the foreshadowing might be getting at, but that's probably not even worthwhile.

The interaction between Jaime and Tyrion at the end of SoS was a little heartbreaking - definitely a great arc with Jaime.

Literally a day ago. I think it's worthwhile for you to press on to Feast before spending too much time re-treading old grounds. First, because a lot of the theories that people have about the backstory won't make sense unless you have the context in Feast and Dance, but second because GRRM does tend to recap some of the important stuff when he hits it in future books.

For example, while you don't get as much of the picture of the Tourney at Harrenhall/Knight of the Laughing Tree in later books that you do in Meera's story, you do get it from other perspectives (notably, Ser Barristan).

I'd also recommend checking out towerofthehand.com. It has a way for you to pre-set the most recent book you've finished, so you can be free of spoilers but still get really good information.

Be forewarned, Feast is a bit of a tough slog. It's heavily focused on Jaime and Cersei, and it doesn't touch on Dany, Jon, or Tyrion at all. Dance is better, but nothing really compares with Storm. Best book in the series IME.

and it has been dragging. Especially compared to SoS, where all the characters were great and the hits just kept coming. Hopefully it picks up and the 5th book will be better with characters I am more familiar with and story arcs I enjoy more.

The Jaime and Arya pieces were good and the Cersei pieces are critical to understanding events in the land, just filtered through the lens of an extremely unpleasant character.

Otherwise agree, large portions of that book were nigh unreadable and I wonder how much him being pissed off at the Iraq war and "needing to say something" contributed to it(for reference the part where the BoB comes back is a pretty powerful allegory). Not arguing it being right or wrong, just wondering at the effects.

It's funny, to me Dance is the much more blatant Iraq allegory (occupying force trying to impose democracy/freedom against a guerilla campaign by a committed enemy) and is less effective for it because it feels forced. Feast is definitely anti-war, but it's much more inspired by Martin's experience as part of the Vietnam generation and a general anti-war sentiment, I think.

Meribald's speech is a great moment and where you realize to some extent that he pulled the wool over your eyes with his focus on the Game of Thrones that high lords play while everyone else suffers for their ultimately petty bullshit.

I absolutely loved the Cersei chapters. I think they're incredibly clever. Seeing things through the eyes of someone who is - I wouldn't be so kind as to say unpleasant, I would say almost completely evil - I think that's fascinating. And not only evil, but incompetent, which is equally fascinating. It really made me wish there had been a Joffrey chapter. One of GRRM's real gifts is the ability to subtly shift his writing style to adapt to the POV of the individual characters. Plus you get so much in-depth knowledge about Cersei's motivations and complexities.

I suppose you could say that Cersei has chapters out of necessity, since you kind of need to know what's going on in King's Landing in order to keep abreast of the geopolitical situation. But they were my favorite in FfC because it's the first time we truly got a POV from a character we're supposed to be rooting against.

See, I thought AFFC was much better than ADwD. Book five made Tyrion painfully boring to read and I'm getting really bored with how much he is dragging out Dany's story. I feel like she has been treading water for a long time. I loved seeing the Dornish stuff, though, and the Cercei chapters were fascinating. I agree that I groaned through all of Brienne's chapters. I didn't mind the Ironmen, though. And honestly, parts of ASoS went slow for me. I hated almost every single Catelyn chapter of the series and I wasn't a huge fan of Jon's time with the wildlings. But yes, I still agree it is the best book of the series.

right now. I found my most interesting personal revelations about things I missed/didn't notice came after I had finished all of the books. For example, I found details about the Others that I didn't notice in the prologue of AGOT until a re-read.

I think perhaps the more interesting question for you to ask right now is do you want to read books 4 and 5 as they are written, or do you want to read them chronologically since the two books focus on two different sets of POV characters. If you search for "A Feast For Dragons" in google, you will likely come up with a chapter order guide that tells you which chapters follow which chronologically. However, I believe you may get more out of reading the books as intended if you are going to do a detailed read of both books 4 and 5. Those two, especially in relation to book 3, are a lot more intricate.

The prevailing thing seems to be "just do it" and start FoC. Cool. I wasn't going to wait much more than a day or two but figured there might be a chapter here or there that would be worth re-freshing before diving in head first.

Also, thanks for the resources - I had putzed around the message boards of Westeros.org but didn't really find the character bios broken down by books - that seems to be the perfect way to review without risking spoilers. I'll have to check out tower of the hand as well.

Before reading the FfC prologue you must re-read Arya IX from CoK, paying close attention to the parting between Arya and Jaqen H'ghar and the description of all that takes place.

It may be worth re-reading the CoK Sansa chapter in which Sandor barges into Sansa's room during the Battle of the Blackwater, paying attention to what doesn't happen, and then paying attention whenever Sansa thinks back to that event. GRRM has specifically said the way things happened there was on purpose, but hasn't explained why (and neither has the significance, if there's to be any, shown up in the most recent two books.) This isn't totally necessary to understand the next two books, but there's at least a little something to notice.

If you're so inclined, that link has a suggested chapter reading order for the next two books, should you be interested in reading them together rather than first reading FfC then DwD. Link is spoiler-free unless you click on other links or unless you like being surprised about who are the POV characters, and the order of chapter reading takes care to preserve the mysteries until they're supposed to be read.

The first three are great, after that it seems like the fame and the scope of the series has gotten to Martin (which is also evidenced by the amount of time it takes him to write the books - Feast took 5 years to release and Dance took 6 years... which is made even worse since Martin said that Dance should come out quickly after Feast since it was supposed to split up the material he already wrote).

If you get into the books don't hold out for the next one to be released; at the rate he's been taking we won't see the final book for another 12 years.

Feast is a huge change of pace than the other books, but I maintain that from a 'literature' aspect, it's probably the strongest book. Some fantastic writting and scenes in it, Cersei's arc (while I still hate her) is really well done, and I still think that Septon Meribald's talk about broken men is the strongest passage in the series.

I really was annoyed by AFFC when I first read the series, because it was coming right after the madness that is the end of ASOS, and it has such a different tone. But upon rereading it, I really enjoyed it (also because it's pretty Jaime heavy,and he's one of my favourite characters in the series).

As for rereads go, I'd really recommend rereading the series, if you have time to (i listened to the books on tape on my commute to work for my reread, Roy Dotrice is the man). The first time i read the books I was mostly interested in the plot, finding out what happens next and generally feeling like I'm racing through the series to hit the next "crazy" point. Upon rereading it, I picked up on a ton of the smaller details that make the really strengthen the series (and the massive amount of foreshadowing GRRM does)